


when you come of age, you can't blame anything on your parents anymore

by SerpentineJ



Series: gintama rarepair fic [2]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Gen, M/M, both kind of one sided though on different sides
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 08:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14101611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerpentineJ/pseuds/SerpentineJ
Summary: Gintoki has never stopped taking things from him, Takasugi thinks viciously.





	when you come of age, you can't blame anything on your parents anymore

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: Im writing this while rewatching shinsengumi crisis arc .. so time set somewhere after there?

"I've fallen in love with their song," Bansai says, and Takasugi can't see his face, but it sounds like he's smiling. "I've lost."

Bansai leaves. Takasugi twists his lips. The shamisen strings are sharp under his fingers. He takes another drag off his pipe and stares out at the darkened port from the window of their small boat, his shamisen lying forgotten in his lap. The remains of his and Bansai's unfinished dinners remains on their tables.

"Gintoki," Takasugi says lowly, biting down on the mouthpiece of his pipe. Bansai's insistence on interpreting the world as he sees it through music is an eccentricity that endears him to Takasugi. Bansai is not someone he has pinned down. He is not as easily read as someone like Itou Kamotaro. 

This time, Bansai has disregarded his instruction. Sakata Gintoki has taken someone from him again. Takasugi hates the ease with which Gintoki draws people in around him. What's so interesting about that man, anyways? Takasugi hates even more that he knows the answer, and that in hating Gintoki, he falls prey to the same habit of fixating on him. Takasugi is only one of many people Gintoki has unknowingly ensnared.

And now Bansai, too. Takasugi had thought Bansai's unquestioning loyalty towards him after their shared experience in the prison in which they had met was a quality which made him worthy of being considered his second in command. Now, Bansai shows signs of being swayed by Gintoki after only two encounters. 

"Every single one of them," Takasugi says under his breath, smoke curling out of his mouth in the same breath. 

~~~~~~

Bansai cannot stop thinking about Sakata Gintoki.

Those thoughts follow him when he sleeps and when he wakes, which is a crying shame, since he gets the impression that the Shiroyasha probably doesn't even remember who he is, outside of one of Shinsuke's retainers. 

He had accused the Shiroyasha of being a bloodied ghost, obsessed with the shadow of his country. He is starting to think that Shinsuke is the ghost, and he is obsessed with the shadow of something Bansai does not yet know.

"Then and now," the Shiroyasha had said, black uniform soaked in blood from Bansai's strings, limbs ripping with the effort of bringing down a helicopter with only a few steel-strong shamisen strings and pure force of will, "what I have fought to protect has never changed!"

Sakata Gintoki. Bansai stands on concrete overlooking black water, and stares out at the point where the sky meets the sea. He reaches out one hand in front of him, and the darkness is so pervasive that the outlines of his fingers begin to disappear into it. The grimy lights from the city behind him throw a weak illumination over them. The moon is full. 

"You can't get attuned to my song?" Shinsuke had said. Bansai thinks that Shinsuke and the Shiroyasha's tunes are similar but unique, like two tunes composed by one artist but played on different instruments. He feels his loyalty to Shinsuke and the Kiheitai, but Sakata Gintoki's words have attached themselves to his heart and will not let him rest. He feels the urge to speak to Gintoki and his retainers again. 

"Maybe you are the one who cannot let go of the past," Bansai murmurs, voice lost to the rolling expanse of dark water. "Shinsuke."

He slips his hands in his pockets. The breeze off the water slips past him and threads through his hair. 

Sakata Gintoki has given him some things to think about. He turns and heads back to the city. He resolves to look further into the Shiroyasha. 

~~~~~~

Bansai's observation of the Shiroyasha- now known as the Yorozuya- is completely fruitless.

He tails both Gintoki and his retainers for a little bit, since Shinsuke has ordered him off of taking part in any Kiheitai operations before his various wounds have time to heal, but from what he can tell the man and the children both are completely ordinary, if useless, members of society. He watches the Shiroyasha pick his nose through the window, and the boy with glasses clean and fuss like a mother hen, and the girl in the China dress eat a ridiculous amount of pickled seaweed and play with that massive dog. They are completely unremarkable. Even the jobs they take are plain and ordinary. Bansai watches them chase down a lost dog and help repair an old lady's toilet. 

"Is this your true tune?" Bansai murmurs. The Yorozuya trio's ensemble is something akin to a haphazard collection of notes. They don't fit together perfectly, drawling lazily at times and falling over themselves at others. Bansai wonders what makes their song so unique. When Gintoki had taken Bansai and his helicopter down the cacophony of his soul had peaked in a raging crescendo. His wild smile had broken through Bansai's carefully formed considerations. 

~~~~~~

"I've heard you've been spending time hanging around Gintoki's place," Takasugi says, coming up behind Bansai. Bansai doesn't turn around. His sunglasses-shuttered gaze is fixed somewhere out the porthole of the Kiheitai's space ship, which is docked in one of Edo's many ports. The sky is gray, so the water is gray. The sound of the single, solitary shamisen playing in Shinsuke's heart reaches Bansai's ears. As always, its tune is lamenting, the sharp notes packed with controlled intensity. "Anything I should know?"

Bansai doesn't remove his headphones. He knows Shinsuke doesn't expect him to.

"Nothing in particular," Bansai says.

"Does that mean Gintoki is no longer worth your attention," Takasugi says, an edge creeping into his voice, "or merely that he has not done anything of interest so far?"

"Who can say?" Bansai says, eyes on the cloudy sea. "His song reminds me of yours, Shinsuke. Willful and chaotic."

"Is that so," Takasugi replies. He comes to stand beside Bansai looking out through the porthole. His stance is lazy and languid. "And whose song would you say holds more potential?"

Bansai smiles.

"Both of you are strong," he says.

Takasugi looks at him from the corner of his good eye. He takes a pull from his pipe. The smoke clouds the air when he exhales. 

~~~~~~~

Takasugi lies awake in his sleeping chambers that night.

He doesn't think Bansai will be so completely swayed by Gintoki that he will defect from the Kiheitai, or anything drastic like that, but already a strange attachment to the Shiroyasha has prevented his capable second-in-command from accomplishing a job as Takasugi had ordered. Already Gintoki is drawing in the people in his orbit. Bansai is entirely too curious for his own good. This independence is one of the reasons Takasugi values him so highly, but it is also one of the main factors that goes against the keystone of his loyalty to the Kiheitai. If Gintoki can have this kind of effect after only a few meetings, what could be next?

He thinks of Katsura and Gintoki, standing back to back against him even in this day and age. Gintoki, making merry with this Kaientai's Sakamoto. Gintoki, who has retained both his old friends and collected new ones. 

A head of straight, white hair flashes on the dark of the back of his eyelids.

Gintoki has never stopped taking things from him, Takasugi thinks viciously.

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: tumblr: kimishitaatsushi twitter: serpentinej


End file.
